Mobile communication service providers establish base communication stations across their coverage areas to allow users of the communication services to communicate with the communication service throughout the coverage area. As users move throughout the coverage area, a communication session between a mobile device and the communication system is handled by one or more of the base stations. The placement of such base communication stations is typically not disclosed by the mobile communication service providers and is often intentionally kept as a secret.
Communications (e.g., messages) transmitted by base stations do not always uniquely identify the base station. For example, while communications according to the code division multiple access (CDMA) communication standard include a pseudo random (PN) number associated with the base station, each base station can include multiple PN numbers (e.g., here the base station includes multiple communication sectors (e.g., antennas)) and the PN numbers may not be unique throughout the communication system (e.g., two base stations may use the same PN number).